On Grief
Grief. Grieve. Everything deserves a funeral. Where did I read that?
Strange thing grief is, seemingly never reaching its end. My dad left. My grandpa died. My relationship ended. My dad died. My book was done. My friend was no longer my friend. Things changed, just a little. Things changed a whole lot. I was broken by a relationship. I am still in mourning. In waves. Once in a while. It’s soft. Then heavy. Then heart-wrenching burning crushing my stomach punched in like when: your grandpa died. Each ending a little harder because with it everything else, again. More each time. I say goodbye with fast food and have a taste of what was what could have been had we been a little more ready for each other. The dead father the one who left, the one who died reborn into something hard to recognize, time and again. My best friend and lover and our many goodbyes over and over. I wrote them a letter. I write everyone a letter. I’ve written so many letters on so many notebooks on my computer on my phone in my mind but they don’t quite seem like enough to put outside what eats my insides some nights. The nightmares of old fights even after I thought I’d figured that out that I had let go that what was left was soft and slow I am visited by ghosts of what made us take different paths. I didn’t notice until I did. What if I could have been a better kid to my dad? It’s all entangled. My friend’s dad died a few years later, I wrote some words by the water I took some pictures of moss I gave him all that for his birthday. I knew his grief he knew mine.
I grieve when I look inside. I mourn a writer. I mourn a dancer. I mourn a dreamer. I mourn the long-form fiction the discipline the dedication. I mourn my joy in all of it, today very hard to tell apart from a need to deliver –
I grieve an openness to each connection, now tainted by suspicion that this new stranger I am learning will also show me wounds too large for mine; that mine will eat theirs up. That we won’t make it work. That I’ll see the relationships that broke me the dad that died the grandfather that left me stomach-punched for the first time – the second time. That I’ll be visited by ghosts of books I wrote so I would be liked. Or so I would survive.
I had a long phase after my father’s death when I was fascinated by moss and how things grow from death and rupture. I tried to find in this loss some inspiration I wrote some poems some letters. I don’t know where they are. I find myself now, after a few years of multiple broken or bent (or paused?) relationships and one death later, looking at the moss again. Finland was wet and left me dreaming of fairylands and mushroom friends and missing all of these people who touched me and whose departure I still don’t quite understand. Why do things end? Do they end? I try to find in me the parts that know I am never really left by things I love, that I am in them they are in me that once touched by their collision with my path I am different they are different we are still all made of the same stuff. I recall those words from that book: whatever our souls are made of his and mine are the same. I think that concept is flawed; we are whole because we are plural. Those walls an illusion. Every time I take a trip I see the universe as it holds us and is held in us. There is no death or death never ends. None of this is new but repeating it makes sense because each time those words are written down is a reminder to let go of attachments to a state of things that does not exist. I know this. I grieve.
2025 was a year of grief. It started with me in trauma rooms reconnecting with those parts of myself most young and hurt and unsure how to help them feel loved. I took all those strategies I had learnt and they didn’t seem to quite fit. I came back on that plane sick sleepless scared. I waited for a message that did not come. I fought myself I lived in my shame. I hid I bent I kneeled. I lived far away from my body I could not come down. For a while I could not come down. Why can’t I come down? And now I grieve. I grieve those months of pain I grieve the person I lost in the aftermath I grieve how much of myself I lost in the aftermath. I grieve the before and I am in awe of the after the bravery the anger the love for self and other – same thing. I write here words of mourning and I notice they live next to a hope for renewal new versions of old things bits of love that come again.
we grew and grew apart 9th grade tears on that 10th grade break I am hugged and held in my pain
I don’t really understand why things change.
I don’t understand. I don’t understand. I don’t understand.
It’s impossible to hold – change. But change is always you told me. I don’t really know how to let go. Embrace. Moments of softness and love without attachment visit me when I’m alone at the beach. I wish you well. I kiss the air I notice the spikiness of the trees I am hugged by the sand. It doesn’t have to stay the same to exist. I am reminded. I forget again – or it just doesn’t feel palpable I can’t hold it I am visited by the stomach-punch pain:
his voice on the radio from before
that day he left us for some new lover in another city I don’t remember but I do
my dad my best friend
died over and over again until only bits of him left by the time he went swimming
his poems are the moss
I write what he would have written me had he read what I wrote that day that he probably died
I grieve that it’s not the same
that book I finished that part of me that died underwater that day when I wished for death and to be moss I guess to be moss sounds like the answer to most things
my best friend my first love my soulmate if there ever was one
all those goodbyes over and over again
the person who waited for a message that never came
my partners; those letters unanswered all seem ok when I think of how much love:
compassion shared pain grief held
if only our wounds hadn’t met each other then maybe we wouldn’t know them so well
and we wouldn’t have had to say goodbye that day with fast food and again on the phone
but we wouldn’t know them so well
but we wouldn’t have cut deeper into the skin either
So I guess there is no point in trying to understand. I mourn I grieve I make the funerals over and over again because nothing really ends there is no such thing as time I hold all of these souls that have touched me all of these things I have done that had an end they sit on my bed with me we share touch and softness we fall apart together our tears join in a glass we celebrate the love the loss; and we try and carry each other
we try and carry each other
